Facebook Home: Zuck’s Android Takeover

MENLO PARK, California — Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn your Android phone into a simple sharing device. And by that, he means he wants to turn it into a Facebook phone.

Facebook just announced Facebook Home, which all but turns any Android handset into a “Facebook phone” by putting the social giant right there on the home screen and all of its products at the forefront of the UI. It isn’t a phone made by Facebook. It’s something better than that, and in some ways, more important: a deeply integrated application with its hooks set tightly into the Android platform. Think of it as an apperating system.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hinting at following this path for years, even as he fought back incessant Facebook phone rumors. A phone is “so clearly the wrong strategy for us,” he said last year. And he’s right. Facebook can’t take on Apple and Samsung, or even Microsoft and BlackBerry. Making hardware is a lot of work, and that kind of work doesn’t make sense for Facebook right now. Instead, the social network is ensuring it can be as front-and-center as possible on all the most popular platforms today.

“Today we’re finally going to talk about that Facebook phone. Or more accurately we’re going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great social, simple device,” Zuckerberg said at the launch event in Menlo Park. He went on to describe how people most often use Facebook on their mobile devices and explain why Facebook chose to build an Android experience, rather than a phone. “A great phone might sell 10 or 20 million units at best. Our community as more than 1 billion people in it. Even if we did a good job selling a phone, we would only be serving 1 to 2 percent of our community and we want to do more than that.”

Of course, Facebook couldn’t just come out with what is, essentially, an Android homescreen. It needed something to reskin, so it worked with HTC to release the first phone with Facebook Home, the aptly named HTC First. It’s a mid-level handset with decent enough specs and a bland hardware design. Yep, another rectangle with rounded edges and home button. (Surprise! It looks a whole lot like an iPhone.) But that’s almost beside the point. You’ll see Facebook Home on a whole lot of phones — and soon — because it’s designed to work on any Android handset.

That isn’t quite what people expected, which explains all of the “Facebook phone” rumors and headlines. But it makes perfect sense: Facebook Home’s software has so much more reach than any hardware ever could. Remember the HTC Chacha and HTC Status with dedicated Facebook buttons and signature Facebook blue coloring? No? That’s OK. Neither sold well. Facebook Home, on the other hand, doesn’t have to sell at all, because it can run on almost any Android phone. (As with any installable, there are hardware requirements, and there are a lot of old Android phones out in the world.) Home offers a deeply integrated mobile Facebook experience without having to give up the Android system you already know and love. Facebook already is the top free app on Google’s mobile OS, so demand for Facebook on a smartphone is definitely there — unlike the questionable demand for a phone made by Facebook.

As soon as you launch Facebook Home, you’re taken directly to your Facebook home screen — a rotating News Feed — where you’ll see the latest updates from friends and pages you follow. The status updates show up as full screen images, which you can interact with right from there. For example, you can double tap to like a photo or status as it’s on your home screen.

The phone isn’t just about your Facebook network, though. An app drawer gives you quick access to all of the standard Android apps like Play Store, Chrome and camera, while also putting Facebook goodies like Instagram and Messages at your fingertips. Facebook also made some basic alterations to the Android UI, such as making it easy for you post status updates, take and share photos to the site and check in to locations wherever you go directly from there. It’s all elegantly designed and seamlessly integrated into Android. The built-in Gallery app lets you share directly to Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook Camera.

A Facebook notification screen, donned with your cover/profile photo, alerts you to all of the latest happenings in your social network. You can see who has sent you a message or liked your post or which of your friends are out at a nearby bar.

Facebook has also created a new messaging system called Chatheads. Yes, Chatheads. Messaging is built directly into the UI so you don’t need to hop in and out of different apps to chat with friends. Once a friend messages you, their profile picture pops up as a small circular icon. You can tap it and open up the message thread, and leave the Chathead on the screen so you can easily go back to your chat. You can have multiple conversations as well, with all the chatheads you like on your screen. Once you’re done, you can swipe the Chatheads away from the screen. It works with Facebook messages and SMS, and barely distinguishes between the two (except by color with blue and green).

Facebook Home controls more of your Android experience than you’re used to — it’s much more than an app. It controls your lock screen and can see what other apps you’re currently running on the phone through its app launcher. It has control over your system and WiFi settings. The goal is to make it as easy as possible to do anything you’d want to do with Facebook, Instagram and the rest of Zuckerberg empire. Gone is the need to hunt through pages of separate apps. Your whole Facebook experience is all right there on the home screen, one tap away.

The phone is almost irrelevant, because it won’t be long before you can install Facebook Home on your own handset. It’s a decidedly mid-range device straight out of last year, with a 4.3-inch glass display, a dual-core Snapdragon processor, and running Android 4.1 (a year-old Android OS.) It’s available on AT&T’s network starting April 12, for $100. On the same day, you’ll be able to get Facebook Home on the HTC One and One X, the Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note II

If HTC First sparks enough interest, other handset makers could start pushing phones with a built-in Facebook Home. Facebook has already set up the Facebook Home project to help handset makers and carriers build Android phones with Facebook Home. It allows Facebook to work with carriers like HTC to optimize for battery life and system notifications. But for Facebook, it’s less about the the devices and more about making sure its social network is available as the best experience possible on the world’s most popular platform.

Facebook already has deep integration into the Windows Phone platform, with the ability to populate the main People and Photos hubs. And the social network’s tools are as integrated as Apple will allow in iOS 6. The one major platform missing deeper integration was Android, and it had many more possibilities than the others considering the malleability of the operating system.

Facebook Home on Android is a huge step for the social networking company. While Zuckerberg has made it clear the company did not want to make a phone, Facebook Home provides the clearest look yet at what Facebook’s mobile future looks like and how the company can turn current phones into Facebook phones.